Thoughts and random commentary centered on PvP, PvE, and the game as a whole. I'm interested in looking at the game from an analytical point of view, from it's design, to implementation, to both intended and unintended outcomes.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

My druid has been specced Deep Resto (14/0/47) for quite some time and the spec has been quite good to me through Battlegrounds and in the Arena... when both aren't lagging all to hell... which, by the by, Kel'Thuzad has been plagued with since the latest patch. Blizzard, get your collective heads out of your asses and lets get this stuff working!

On the flip side, I've been getting much more sleep than usual.

Back to the build. The above build is complemented by the Rejuvenation and Healing Touch glyphs and the strength of the build has been primarily through stacking hots to serve as a buffer for consistent or impending burst damage, and spamming Regrowth and Healing Touch (1.5 second cast) when trying to heal through the burst when it comes. One of the more favorable aspects of this build is the synergy between Imp. Regrowth, Living Seed and Nature's Grace. My Regrowth has around a 60% chance to crit, which means many 1 second Healing Touches, 1 second Cyclones, or 1.3 second Regrowths.

The important concept to note here is that Lifebloom spam is no longer the 'go to' ability that it once was. Pre-3.0, my Lifeblooms would tick for 230+ healing per application, where post 3.0, we're looking at ~185 healing per application. This healing gap and the mana cost gap has made prioritizing stacking Lifebloom from scratch only necessary in the situations where there's no other choice. Often, with the burst found in BGs/Arenas, applying a Lifebloom/Rejuv to buy you time to further bomb Healing Touches/Regrowths is the correct call. In the arenas, casting these heals (OMG they have cast times) can be quite difficult as Resto Druids are a key target due to their vulnerabilities, but the other key talent for this build makes melee match ups much more favorable.

Improved Tree of Life.

This 3 point talent is amazing in that with it, you can tank a Ret Paladin indefinitely and Rogues become much more manageable. One of the amazing aspects of ToL is that a) you can heal while in this form, b) you have a very high armor value and c) shifting out of ToL doesn't eat your GCD. All of these make surviving that much easier so that healing teammates is a possibility, instead of a dream.

If you're looking for survivability with some effective healing through the gamut of PvP environments, I believe Deep Resto is hard to beat... as long as you have a pillar to hide behind.